The Story of a Lover

Synopsis

Perhaps that rage was merely jealousy, that loathsome feeling based on an incredible sense of possession, but I do not believe that. After my genuine social thought began she might have had all manner of relations with other men, without deep disturbance on my part; I might have been unmoved, had she seen me, once and forever! But as I have said, she felt only my qualities, my gifts of the mind, heart, and spirit. She did not have an immediate, temperamental understanding and love for myself! And to have this feeling for some soul is a need of all deep natures. When I saw this need in her—unsatisfied by me—reaching out to others to whom she had no coherent relation—only the mysterious, temperamental, almost metaphysical one that we mean when we say “in love”—it was then that the rage came upon me! Was it jealousy? It was strong and terrible, whatever it was, capable of overpowering all the acquired canons of civilization and making of me an incarnate, miserable, bestial Demand!

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